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FREE STOLEN AIR: SELECTED POEMS OF OSIP MANDELSTAM PDF Christian Wiman,Osip Mandelstam | 128 pages | 01 Jun 2012 | HarperCollins Publishers Inc | 9780062099426 | English | New York, United States Stolen Air: Selected Poems of Osip Mandelstam | Yale Divinity School Bookstore Goodreads helps you keep track of books you want to read. Want to Read saving…. Want to Read Currently Reading Read. Other editions. Enlarge cover. Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Open Preview See a Problem? Details if other :. Thanks for telling us about the problem. Return to Book Page. Preview — Stolen Air by Osip Mandelstam. Christian Wiman Translator. Ilya Kaminsky Contributor. A new selection and translation of the work of Osip Mandelstam, perhaps the most important Russian poet of the twentieth century. Political nonconformist Osip Mandelstam's opposition to Stalin's totalitarian government made him a target of the communist state. The public recitation of his poem known in English as "The Stalin Epigram" led to his arrest, exile, and event A new selection and translation of the work of Osip Mandelstam, perhaps the most important Russian poet of the twentieth century. The public recitation of his poem known in English as "The Stalin Stolen Air: Selected Poems of Osip Mandelstam led to his arrest, exile, and eventual imprisonment in a Siberian transit camp, where he died, presumably in Mandelstam's work, much of it written under extreme duress, is an extraordinary testament to the enduring power of art in the face of oppression and terror. Stolen Air spans Mandelstam's entire poetic career, from his early highly formal poems in which he reacted against Russian Symbolism to the poems of anguish and defiant abundance written in exile, when Mandelstam became a truly great poet. Aside from the famous early poems, which have a sharp new vitality in Wiman's versions, Stolen Air includes large selections from The Moscow Notebooks and The Voronezh Notebooks. Going beyond previous translators who did not try to reproduce Mandelstam's music, Christian Wiman has captured in English for the first time something of Mandelstam's enticing, turbulent, and utterly heartbreaking sounds. Get A Copy. Paperbackpages. More Details Friend Reviews. To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up. To ask other readers questions about Stolen Airplease sign up. Lists with This Book. Community Reviews. Showing Average rating 4. Rating details. More filters. Sort order. Oct 27, Lauren rated it it was amazing Shelves: translated-worksbest-ofpoetryrussia-russian-lit. You're one person when you pick up a book, and when you finish, you're quite another. That's definitely how this one struck me. Initial thoughts when I picked up this slim volume of modernist Russian poetry: past-time, a toe-in-the- water, a let's see why I keep seeing his name mentioned. Post-reading thoughts: is this what perfection looks like? Did I just read my favorite poetry collection ever? Wiman's translation is sublime. The Introduction essay by NBA-shortlisted poet Ilya Kaminsky propelled me right into more research on Mandelstam, and Stolen Air: Selected Poems of Osip Mandelstam unique poetic style. Kaminsky notes Mandelstam's birthplace in Poland and his family's migration to Russia, learning Russian as his second Stolen Air: Selected Poems of Osip Mandelstam. He muses if this is why Mandelstam's use of language is different, more playful with onomatopoeia and lilting phrases and meter. InMandelstam wrote a short poem and recited it to some friends at a gathering. One of these friends informed on him and his subversive words about Joseph Stalin. Mandelstam was arrested and imprisoned for this act. And it wasn't the last time either. Mandelstam and his wife, Nadezhda, were both arrested again, and sent to Stolen Air: Selected Poems of Osip Mandelstam gulag, where Mandelstam later died in Right after reading this, I ordered a copy of her book, Hope Agaist Hope, and some of Osip's translated essays. View 2 comments. Sep 19, Laura rated it it was amazing Shelves: favoritespoetry. This translation sings. Some of my favorite excerpts: "Frogs, all ooze and noise, bellvowel Their bodies into a single aural oil. It is now. It is not. Nov 05, Claudia Putnam rated it it was amazing Shelves: poetry. When Christian Wiman is on, he's on. And in this case, he applies his considerable talents as a poet to translating Mandelstam. M himself thought translating poetry nearly impossible, and his wife, Nadezhda, speaks to this as well in Hope Against Hope, suggesting that translation is a mere mechanical process of grinding out verse, and that only occasionally can a poet render poetry from another language Stolen Air: Selected Poems of Osip Mandelstam poetry in his or her own language. The poems in this volume have been judiciously select When Christian Wiman is on, he's on. The poems in this volume have been judiciously selected. Some Mandelstam pieces, IMO, simply cannot be translated well, or at least cannot be translated as great poems in English And also learning the historical and cultural context to go along with that, because if you're attached to the idea that a piece of work should stand on its own, you lose attachment that when you approach that work in translation. If you read through a lot of Mandelstam you'll find that there are certain pieces that translators consistently struggle with. Whether it's a line or a stanza, every. And that's only the sense, not even the sound. Not to mention Mandelstam's powerful manipulation of images as juxtaposed with sound--for example, he might drive you in a few stanzas through ancestors' feasts, bloodied bones, cowardly shit, gleaming arctic foxes, wolfhounds hunting you down, pines reaching for stars, and execution. All delivered through tight, sing-song rhymes and sussurating consonants, as if he were gently whispering all this in your ear. But all of the translations of the poem I just described are failures, IMO, and Wiman does not attempt it. So, the translations in this collection work well because Wiman has selected the ones he could make a great difference with He's concerned with rendering both the content AND a sense of the sound, even if he doesn't structure the poems the way Mandelstam did, or use end-rhymes in the cases where M did. You still get feeling for the juxtapositions and some of the primary concerns. He does sometimes add phrases that are in line with the meaning but not at all or even suggested in the original, but he includes them to make the lines scan, as they would Stolen Air: Selected Poems of Osip Mandelstam in the Russian. Stolen Air: Selected Poems of Osip Mandelstam in: Take from my palms, for joy, for ease, A little honey and a little sun. In the Russian there is no sign of the phrase "for ease," but it does work better that way in English. Much is made of M's love of life and the joy that creeps through despite the despair. Even so I would say exposing joy in the darkness is not the legacy of M's life. It was to preserve a sense of human scale and the value of human life and, fundamentally what we might define as the golden rule amid Stalinism and the Communist celebration of Stolen Air: Selected Poems of Osip Mandelstam revolution. He searched for and celebrated kindness even more than joy, I think. Perhaps Wiman might have made Stolen Air: Selected Poems of Osip Mandelstam clearer. Sorrowdrawl written while in exile, just under 2 years before dying in the gulag after rearrest--he was very sick, shattered by torture and near- starvation Shut up: to be alone is to be alive, To be a alive is to be a man-- Even hazied, even queasied by this mansmash hinterland, Lost and locked in the sky's asylum eye. This is my prayer Stolen Air: Selected Poems of Osip Mandelstam the air To which I turn and turn expecting news or ease, Nerves minnowing from shadowhands Toward shadowlands inside of me. This is my prayer To be of and under a human-scale sky, To suffer a human-scale why, to leave This blunt sun, these eternal furrows, For the one country that comes when I close my eyes. From Tristia: What rot has reached the very root of us That we should have no language for our praise? What is, was; what was, will be again; and our whole lives' Sweetness lies in these meetings that we recognize. Who alone can use, like a kind of sacrificial glue, Word and blood to bind and mend these centuries? Blood the builder brings forth the future. From the garroted throat of this very hour. My animal, my age, ravenous in your cage, What flute might bend the bars, bind the gnarled knees of days, and bring forth a world Of newness, a world trued to music View all 12 comments. Apr 29, Rick rated it it was amazing Shelves: poetry. I read a handful of the first poems in the Barnes and Noble, a few more in a bar as I watched Barcelona win a game. Mandelstam was Stolen Air: Selected Poems of Osip Mandelstam poet before there was a revolution, before there was a Soviet gulag though a czarist oneand before he was an exile and victim of Stalinism. It was all leaflife and starshower, unerring, self-shattering power, And it was all aimed at me. What is this dire delight flowering fleeing always earth? What is being? What is truth? 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